City Postmaster Puts Stamp On Reform Plan

January 19, 1995|By Sharman Stein, Tribune Staff Writer.

Chicago's postmaster announced a series of sweeping initiatives Wednesday designed to improve the city's abysmal mail service, including a new system to monitor carriers and a $10 million program to construct or renovate four post offices.

Postmaster Rufus Porter, who in May became the city's seventh postmaster in nine years, also announced that he has started examining the city's 2,800 mail routes for the first time in 20 years and instituted a system to make sure supervisors hit the streets to check up on letter carriers.

Porter's actions came nine months after postal officials discovered thousands of pieces of abandoned mail throughout the Chicago area in a series of incidents. That prompted U.S. Postmaster General Marvin Runyon to dispatch a task force of mail experts to investigate Chicago's troubled service.

"I did not promise a panacea," Porter said. "I cannot fix things overnight. That has been part of the problem in Chicago, that there have been too many quick fixes. We're putting systems into place for the long term."

Chicago has one of the lowest customer-satisfaction ratings in the country, although it has been inching up in recent months.

The new post offices will replace "antiquated" buildings in the South Shore neighborhood, Jefferson Park and Riverdale, Porter said. In Lincoln Park, a new building that has not been selected will be leased for stamp sales, while the post office at 2643 N. Clark St. will be used entirely for the processing of mail, he said.

The postal task force concluded in part that supervisors were failing to check up on carriers as required, which accounted for some of the serious delays and sloppiness in mail delivery.

It also found many routes in the city were outdated, especially in neighborhoods such as Lincoln Park, which have grown quickly. That meant carriers were overburdened and could not deliver their mail within an eight-hour day.

Porter said 30 percent of the 2,800 routes will be examined by the end of the year, with the rest following over the next couple of years. Union rules restrict route examinations to eight months a year.

Among the first neighborhoods to undergo route exams are Lincoln Park, Rogers Park, Uptown, Graceland and Lakeview, which have some of the city's most troubled post offices. The Graceland routes will be examined by the end of January, and Porter said he expects to add more routes in that area.

"By reducing the routes to eight hours, carriers will give better service to the community," he said. "It's logical. It's one of our top priorities to turn the system around."

The recent examination of postal service in Lincoln Park resulted in the addition of 18 routes there, Porter said, which in turn created a need for more room to process mail.

Porter also said he has instituted a system to make sure supervisors are doing the street inspections necessary to ensure that carriers are delivering their mail properly. The system requires that supervisors go out on the street once a week to oversee carriers and formally report their observations.

In the past, Porter conceded, supervisors were failing to check up on the carriers, and there was no system to make sure that they performed this critical task.

"If it had been done, you wouldn't have had all these problems," Porter said. "I'm now trying to put a system into place to check the checkers."

Porter also said he had hired 500 letter carriers, instituted extensive personnel training and stopped the placement of temporary employees in "critical" areas such as lakefront neighborhoods, where mail service has been the worst.

In a meeting with the Chicago Tribune editorial board, Porter also reported that the Chicago customer satisfaction index has improved slightly, to 57 percent from 51 percent. Chicago service is no longer rated the worst in the nation, but it remains among the worst.

The rankings are made by an outside polling firm that sends several thousand mail surveys to Chicago residents about their perceptions of postal service. The most recent survey asked consumers to rate their mail service during the summer of 1994.

By comparison with Chicago, south suburban mail customers in the Chicago area rated their service at 83 percent and north suburban customers rated their service at 80 percent.

The standard measurement for mail service is whether a letter mailed today in Chicago reaches its destination in the city tomorrow. From Sept. 17 through Dec. 9, Chicago carriers got better at achieving that goal. Their success rate rose to 78 percent from 71 percent. The national average was 84 percent.

Porter said construction of the offices is expected to begin this year. The South Shore post office is located at 2207 E. 75th St. The new one will be built at 2600-2620 E. 75th St.

The new Jefferson Park facility will be at 4810-26 N. Milwaukee Ave., at the site of Ann's Department Store, replacing the office at 5401 W. Lawrence Ave.

In Riverdale, a building will be built at 138th and Halsted Streets, the site of the Halsted Drive-In. It will replace the facility at 419 W. 144th St.